I'm in a Rut (But I Don't Wanna Get Out Of It)

To play this classic 1979 punk single click here. 

A woman emails to let me know she fundamentally disagrees with almost everything that is posted on Torpedo the Ark - and particularly the anti-Christian Easter message on warmheartedness [click here]:

"Most of the ideas - if we can even call them ideas - are no more than academic clichés. And to these you repeatedly return as if gripped by an obsessive compulsive disorder, offering the same crude assertions and vulgar insults as if also suffering from Tourette's. I'm sorry to say - though as a follower of Nietzsche perhaps you'll appreciate the cruelty - but I think you're in a deep philosophical rut."

This seems a bit harsh, I have to say, even to a follower of Nietzsche ...

For whilst it's true that I can't concentrate and I don't feel straight - and might also have some issues around the notion of sovereignty - I wouldn't say that I'm in a rut; certainly not in the wholly negative sense that is implied here.

I prefer to think that, as Madonna would say, I've got into the groove and that's ultimately how one proves one's love of wisdom. For philosophy demands a certain level of consistency and, yes, obsessive-compulsive behaviour; an eternal return to the same ideas, same scenes, same songs. It also involves the stuttering of language and a display of idiosyncratic tics, both verbal and behavioural in nature, which to an outside eye might seem to indicate a neuropsychiatric disorder.

But, really, why quibble or get pedantic over terms?

Ultimately, I'd rather be entrenched in the deepest and darkest of philosophical ruts than have my head in the clouds like my idealistic critic who concludes her email by telling me to cheer up and insisting that life is beautiful and Jesus loves me (which it isn't, and he doesn't). 

Anankastikos (In Defence of OCPD)

When I hang my washing out on the line, I like to ensure three things: 

(i) all items of a similar type are kept together (socks with socks, pants with pants, etc.) 

(ii) all items are hung according to size (the largest things first) 

(iii) all items are hung inside out, facing the same way and the same way up.

In addition, I like to make sure all of the pegs are wooden and of the same type; or, if using the plastic pegs, that they are all the same colour (preferably blue). 

According to a full-figured friend of mine who likes to boast of having a degree in psychology, this meticulous attention to detail and concern with aesthetics isn't a noble attempt to impose order upon a chaotic world and give style to an otherwise drab and dreary domestic chore; rather, it's a sign that, like Sheldon Cooper, the fictional theoretical physicist played so brilliantly by Jim Parsons in the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, I suffer from a mental health issue known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). 

Technically, she means obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), which is clinically distinct from the above, though I hardly dare correct her for fear that she regards this as further proof of the condition; a condition which, in my view, is neither undesirable nor unhealthy, but is rather egosyntonic and characteristic of all great artists, dandies, philosophers, and others concerned with achieving a level of perfection.      

My friend might find pleasure in doing her laundry in a carefree manner - recklessly mixing the colours with the whites, hanging things in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, folding items in an incorrect manner - but she'll never know how to give birth to a dancing star or understand why it is that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.